By Edward Marah
Three Senior staff that recently resigned from Society for Radio Democracy 98.1 on allegations of intimidation, harassment disrespect, fear and Institutional bullying has revealed that the current Board Chairman Dr Julius Spenser was first hired by the outgoing station manager Mrs Asma James as a consultant to restructure the station.
Mabel Kabba, Kadijah Bangura and Alex Lawrence Koroma stated in their joint statement that “At some point, the outgoing station manager Mrs Asmaa James hired Dr Julius Spencer as a consultant to look into the problems staff were faced with, a pile of issues were laid before him by the staff. He interviewed everyone separately, on the pretext of the same “restructuring” that he is claiming today”.
They noted that disappointingly, the status quo remained the same as staff morale continued to go down as they lost trust in the Board which is essentially a group of cronies and a rubberstamp, they claimed.
They pointed out that critical voices at the station have resigned and those who remained have since been side-lined as it was evident in the deterioration of programme quality and output stressing that loyal listeners to 98.1 must have sensed the issues in the quality of programming.
The three-season outstanding broadcasters have challenged the Board, particularly the Chairman Dr Spenser, to provide records of any discussions they had about the issues staff have been raising for years now.
On the issue of transparency and accountability on how finances and donations made to the station were accounted for, they noted that “We don’t even want to get into issues of financial transparency and accountability. Let those who donated to Radio Democracy take an interest in that. We have our concerns but that is a topic for whoever comes after to do their findings”.
The Board Chairman Dr Julius Spenser, in his recent statement, noted that there are no crises at Radio Democracy and that those that have resigned want to pursue other opportunities.
However, the million dollars question being asked now is how did Dr Julius Spenser graduate from a hired consultant to a Board Chairman and who are the owners of the station that appointed him as Board Chairman.
All efforts to contact Mrs Asma James proved futile as she is presently out of the country. Our Investigations Continue.